


Resonance

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen | Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
Genre: Gen, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-30 18:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12114942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: Even now, sometimes, when the moon shines in through Misaki's window, she turns in her sleep towards it. Something tugs inside her, and always will.





	Resonance

**Author's Note:**

> This one was for the short-lived ffweeklyprompt, RIP. Prompt was: "Misaki - dreaming of the island, and of someone important."

Even now, sometimes, when the moon shines in through Misaki's window, she turns in her sleep towards it. Something tugs inside her, and always will. In September, when the days are still warm but the nights begin to grow cool, she wanders restlessly. She walks along the seafront late in the evening, and sees the moonlight laying a silver path across the waves, and imagines following it back to the island. Back home.

Most of the time Misaki doesn't think about Rougetsu Island, or what happened there. Life moves on, and she starts to forget - the natural kind of forgetting, where memories soften and blur and become less painful. There are fewer nightmares. Every spring, she thinks she might be done with them altogether. But then when summer ends, she'll catch sight of the moon at the end of a street, or feel a shock at her own reflection looking out at her from an unexpected corner. Sometimes Ruka winces when Misaki comes close, as if pained by some unpleasant sound. And on the anniversary of the festival comes the dream.

It always starts the same way. She wakes again on the dais at the centre of the cavern, where she left Miya all those years ago. It's as if she's always been here, and everything else was the dream. She picks herself up from the ground, in the spot where the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse shattered, and something in her mind shudders and loosens. One piece that never quite fit right. A bell still ringing to a lost note.

She and Sakuya were attuned, the doctors said. When one seemed to be recovering, the other felt better. When one got worse, the other declined. And when Sakuya ascended the lighthouse, ready to sing destruction to the world, Misaki was the first to feel the resonance. She was unconscious, and that protected her from the worst of it. If Misaki had Bloomed, she could have brought on a second Day Without Suffering all on her own. The two of them together would have been devastating.

Even so, that's not why Sakuya put her into a coma. Sakuya wanted the world to Bloom.

She walks through the caverns, pebbles and seashells grating beneath her feet. She wanders down tunnels she doesn't remember seeing before, guided by the scent of salt in the air, and the increasing breeze on her face, until she comes out in the hidden cove beneath the lighthouse. There's no sound but the lapping of waves, and the sigh of the wind in the sea-grass. She sits on a log of driftwood, skipping stones, and watches the moon rise.

There was a line in one of the old books Ruka found: _Beware when the Utsuwa sleeps after the festival._ Misaki has tried to dismiss it. After all, she was never an Utsuwa herself, and she only slept for a little while. She woke up, and nothing happened. She never Bloomed. She regained her memories; she's no longer an empty shell. There's no reason to think that warning has anything to do with her.

Except that on some level, she and Sakuya are the same, intertwined. Most of the time the connection between them is stretched so thin Misaki isn't even aware of it, but it still exists. When one improves, both improve, and when one deteriorates...

In a few years there'll be another lunar eclipse. If there's a time bomb inside her waiting to go off, Misaki would like to know before it's too late.

The moon is above the torii gate now, its reflection bright on the water's surface. Nothing happens. There's no figure waiting on the other side of the gate. There's still that uncomfortable sense of wrongness at the back of her mind, pulling her towards the moon, but she thinks it'll stay dormant for another year. And if it ever does open out of her, a terrible flower bursting into bloom, she'll be here, safe in the dream. The moonlight will make a path for her across the sea, and Sakuya will be there to embrace her and show her the way.

Not because she wants to save the world. Because she wants to save Misaki. Save her from ever knowing how it feels to have her mind collapse under the weight of a thousand souls, her identity obliterated like a reflection in disturbed water.

Misaki waits until the moon disappears behind the cliffs. Then she makes her way back to the cavern. Already she feels calmer. She lies back down in the centre of the dais, a peaceful melody echoing in her ears, and closes her eyes, and wakes.


End file.
